August 05, 2007

Quickies, II

- Hypocrite Hall of Fame: Brad Haley, exec. VP-marketing of CKE Restaurants in Ad Age, “Too often today ads appear that seem to have been developed almost exclusively with the goal of ‘breaking through the clutter’ ...viewers of attention-getting ideas with weak ’selling ideas’ are often left with a soulless thrill and no corresponding development of the brand-consumer relationship.” This from the guy who brought you Paris Hilton washing the car. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

- TAC thinks that the marketing community does not understand how ad strategy needs to change as a result of new media realities. Most pundits attribute the diminishing confidence in advertising to media fragmentation and consumer indifference. TAC thinks it is primarily a creative issue. TAC thinks we started to go bad when we redefined the purpose of advertising from “selling” to “branding” (see Brand Babble. and Indirect Marketing.)

- TAC is getting mighty tired of marketers of mediocre, generic products complaining about how we ad people just don’t get it... how resistant we are to change... how the 30 second spot is dead...how we’re in denial. TAC has a suggestion for these guys -- pull your tv spots for 6 months and let’s see how you do. Then we’ll see who doesn’t get it.

- Worse are the agency people, pundits and critics who have joined this chorus. They ought to know better.

- Trying to change peoples’ attitudes is generally a waste of time and money. Once people make up their minds, they rarely change them. Ask any psychologist or neuroscientist. If the purpose of your advertising is to change attitudes you better re-think what you’re doing. More about this in The Ad Contrarian book.

- Good news: I met a 10 year-old kid the other day whose name wasn’t Tyler.

- User Generated Content: For years we’ve had to put up with cranks bothering us with letters and phone calls. Now that they’ve got video cameras and YouTube we’re supposed to go all wobbly over them. Is there anything more pathetic than a supposedly professional ad agency delegating its job to high school kids?

- Wonder what the account planning crowd are going to say about this? From Ad Age, July 18, 2007, “New data from... 20,000 TiVo units. Two months of the data show that some of the least-skipped ad campaigns were direct-response commercials...” (See Wait A Minute)

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."